2005.12.18

The Year in Summary

I have begun to realize that there will always be another picture that I want to put on the blog. Like how can I end the blog without this picture from Milan?

or this one from Sweden?

But there is also this saying, this little adage that I try to live by: Always keep 'em wanting more. Generally I remember this just after people begin walking out of the theater and in to the parking garage. Around the time they realize they parked their car in 4A (not 4B!) I remember: Always keep 'em wanting more! And I hastily say, to the remaining audience: Thank you so much for coming, have a good night.

But I myself hate to be left. And I want the leaving to be my idea, if something absolutely must end. Or, if I am to be informed that the end is nigh, I prefer to be given a parting gift, something that I can open when I get home, something memorializes everything that ever was.

So this is my gift to you, working with with our designated medium, the bloggy substance, shaping it with the tools at hand, Google image search. It is my year in summary.

2005.12.17

All Good Things Must Come To An End - Brandon Blog Lucky # 7

As Brandon and I sit on this gloomy New Years Eve Saturday, we received the nicest surprise in the mail...in true "Ms. Miranda" form a letter, with pom poms and rainbow yarn I might add, that sparked both of our day asking if we would like to do one more blog. Well Bran and I thought about it and he came up with a different idea...see sometimes when we are bored we sit together and write rhyming poems and read them aloud to one another and laugh to pass the time....crazy I know but we are not your normal Mother and Son duo! He wrote one very early on in the blog about one of his favorite places San Francisco, so we thought we would end on a poem....or two! The first one he wrote for his school art contest (misspelling and all) and the second we collaborated on about this wonderful experience he has had with Me and You and Everyone We Know..........I Wonder Why…Riming poem by Brandon Ratcliff

I wonder why clocks go tick?And why minutes are so quick?What makes the hands on it move?And why does it have a tick tock groove?

I wonder why the sea is blue?And how come sea cows don't go moooooooo?The animals down there are so cool.I wish I had them in my pool.

I wonder why the night sky is so bright with stars?And do aleins really live on the planet Mars?I want to discover this so bad it makes me want to cry!All these things and a hole lot more make my brain sayI wonder why?

All Good Things Must Come To An EndBrandon & Tonni Ratcliff

I got a call from his Manager one day...."Read these sides... it is so Brandon I must say"We laughed our asses off and then his brain went to work like a fighterand me, I just thought... "kudos to this wonderful writer!"

I auditioned a lot for the partI tried really hard right from the start!I was so happy when we got the callMy mom even got me a Scooby Doo toy from the mall!!!

A whole lot of talk was out about this workWould people say "that Mom is a jerk!!!"I thought "Fuck it.. this is what kids say everyday"And people please... they say a lot worse when they are out to play!

We had a lot of fun on the setand after we finished the movie I got a new pet!I knew Ms. Miranda when I was 5 and 6 now I'm 7I hope I still know her when I am 11!

Well, with all of that saidnone of this has gone to his headI teach him that acting is just serious pretendbut most importantly....when all good things must come to an end.

We want to thank EVERYONE who supported this film and the actors and to the true star...someone who has become very dear to us.Thanks for taking the time to get to know us.WE LOVE YOU MIRANDA!

2005.11.02

Brandon Blog #6

Oh my God, Ms. Miranda I was so shocked at your pumpkins!!!! Ya know we haven't talked in a long time. Well I have been so busy with my new school and friends and I even have friends in like 4th and 5th grade and I did some more acting work on 2 like half movies. (Tonni's explanantion: Short films). Thats why I kindof haven't done the blog in a long time. And guess what...me and Ms. JoNelle got to work together again and she was my Mom again ahahaa can you believe that?!!! Two times being my pretend Mom, now that is just a little crazy! But this time we were in Chicago. And ya know what... I really miss you. I wonder what you have been doing. Well you know I am going to Carpenter now since I moved to Studio City and my tonsils and adenoids are really good now after my surgery. And ooooooohhhhhhh guess what I am like sooo into now...Pokemon! I have like over 200 Pokemon cards. I am into Science too. I am buying like a lot of Sciencey type books and I am in the Science Adventure Class afterschool.

So Ms. Miranda I can see what you did on Halloween but you didn't say if you dressed up and wore a costume. You wanna know what I was?..... I was Beast Boy from Teen Titans and I was all green even my hair. Maybe when my mom gets her pictures I will send you one ok I actually told my mom there are lots of pictures I want you to see ok. We did a lot of fun stuff for Halloween time on Saturday we went to the Hollywood cementary for Day of The Dead and you will not believe what happened....This lady recognized me from the movie and I even had a skeleton face painted on and my hair was green and it was really dark outside,but I think my curly hair was a give away. She told my mom that she saw the movie 2 times and it was very healing. Thats pretty weird huh, but my mom said people feel different things when they see movies. I told her that I worked really hard on the movie and it was fun because on my breaks I got to play and sometimes you even played with me and I liked being an actor. She told me that was really nice and she thought you were a nice and really good Director.

Well, I am going to let you go and do my homework so my Mom will let me play my Pokemon game on my Gameboy later ok I hope that you are having fun everyday.

2005.10.31

Happy Halloween

This weekend I had a pumpkin carving party.

Mine is the second one from the left.

What if my blog was like this all the time, full of fun things I had done with my friends and family. Many blogs are like this and they are fascinating. One of my favorites is the Reyes Family Blog http://reyesblog.dabu.com/. I don't know them personally, but have grown to feel as though I do. Here's an entry from Danny Reyes, right after he moved to Tampa in August.

"I'm pretty much settled in although I have a couple of boxes left that I still need to unpack. Today I went to Bank of America and set up a new account as there isn't a Navy Federal Credit Union anywhere in the Tampa Bay area. Bank of America gave me a lot of good deals though including a rewards credit card with no monthly fee so I'll definitely be using that a lot for buying plane tickets. Last saturday I joined the local gym. I'm so sore as I haven't worked out in ages. Hoping I'll get back into it here. I've set up my car insurance but have not gone to the motor vehicle place yet. I'll probably go tomorrow to get my car registered here. The timing couldn't be perfect because the law is pretty laxed here with regards to your automobile. There is no safety inspection or emissions test (which would have been due for me if I was still in VA). You only put a license plate on the rear. Doesn't seem to be a restriction on Tint (probably because of the heat)."

Ok, that one was less interesting, but the Reyes Family has some nice pictures, like this one of Chelsea:

and today this was posted:

October 31, 2005Auntie Nena's 75th Birthday Coming Up

Auntie Nena is turning 75 on February 28, 2006. Rey started a website that talks about how we can help her come to the states around that time. Comments (0)

I am very impressed by this website whose sole purpose is getting the cousins to chip in the bring Auntie Nena out from the Phillipines. Rey scanned Auntie Nena's letter, and she is very explicit about wanting the cousins to pay for her visit. I appreciate that kind of not beating around the bush. I think anyone can actually donate to this cause, they have pay pal set up. In any case, I admire this family. Next week I am visiting my family in Berkeley and I am going to be proactive like the Reyes. I will also be giving some presentations while I am in town, so if you live in the Bay Area you should definitely come. I will be doing many things for the first time. If you don't live in the Bay Area, but you live in Milan, Rome, Madrid, Thessoloniki, Stockholm or Oslo, then perhaps we will cross paths later in the month. mj

November 9, 7:30-9:00pm MJ gives a presentation called "Ten True Things" hosted by The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium of UC Berkeley's Center for New Media

Note new location:

UC Berkeley Art Museum Theater 2621 Durant Avenue (enter at Durant or through garden on Bancroft)Seating is limited. Free tickets (one per person) will be available at the Durant Gate entrance starting at 6pm. Theater Doors will open at 7:10pm. http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/lecs/

November 10 & 12, 7:30pmMJ gives a presentation at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

2005.10.09

October 11th: The DVD comes out

This illustration above does not look like the actual DVD cover. It is
a place-holder, on account of the fact that I don't like to look at the
actual DVD cover because, unlike the movie, it does not reflect my
soul. I know it is not unusual for the director to have no
participation in the DVD cover design, but I have these personal
standards that, as it turns out, are totally unrelated to the way this
business works. Luckily the folks at IFC and Sony have agreed to let me
re-design the cover for the next batch of DVDs. In fact, it is going to
be a complete do-over, with different (director-approved) extras on the
disc as well. I am very relieved because I lost many hours of sleep
over the whole thing, especially the tag-line on the back cover: The
person you've been waiting to find is waiting to be found. I would lay
in bed at night wondering who had come up with this line and how it had
ended up on something that was mine. No offense to the person at Sony
who thought it up, there is nothing bad about it in and of itself. But
for me it is like wearing someone else's hair on my head. Oh Sony
Tag-line Writer, you probably have no idea how much I would have loved
to talk to you and your friend in graphic design. If you two are
reading this now then please contact me through
secretary@mirandajuly.com. I promise we won't talk about the tag-line or
the cover design, because that's water under the bridge, but maybe we
can talk about our hopes and dreams for an industry where great care is
given to every step of the process.

I should perhaps emphasize that this new DVD will not be made until the first hundred thousand DVDs are sold. Which sounds like kind of a lot to me. So don't think: "Well, I'll let those other people buy the first hundred thousand, I'll just wait for the next batch." Because if you are reading this right now then you are the core constituency, you are the 100 thousand. This is not nearly as important as, say, voting, but it utilizes similar muscles. By the time elections roll around your sense that you can make a difference will be strong and ready to go make that difference.

2005.09.28

It Was Romance

When I landed in Paris I was pale and quiet, ready to be put on a helicopter to Deauville that I had good reason to believe would crash. But they said the plans had changed, we were now going by car. And thus, I am alive and well, having survived only a metaphorical helicopter crash. The internal helicopter crash of the soul, from which I am reborn every morning. On the drive to the Deauville film festival we passed many beautiful fields of wheat that looked exactly like these doors on the bathroom in the Paris airport.

I am wearing a necklace made of felt balls by my friend Jennifer Johnson.

The Deauville film festival is an odd event,
in that only American movies are played. Who comes to this festival?
The french people who aren't tired of Americans, who make all the
American actors feel like JLo, even lil' ones like me. I signed many,
many autographs for people who mostly did not know who I was exactly,
having not yet seen the movie, nonetheless, they timed this coastal
vacation with the festival and they'll be damned if they don't come
home with every page of their program autographed. My sense of self is
somewhat ambient to begin with, so I nearly vaporized when I realized
that the picture of me I was signing was taken just a few minutes
before. This young man had a portable photo printer.

After this I walked into a tent where the official photo call happened. This is a group of about 100 photographers who all take photos at once, shouting out "Miranda!" to get me to look in to their specific lens. I knew about this from Cannes. But one thing I had never figured out was this other thing they yelled: "The sign! The sign! Make the sign!" What was the sign? Did they mean the ))<>((? But how do you make that sign? How was I to indicate poop going back and forth forever? And then suddenly it hit me: Wave. I tentatively put my hand in the air and the 100 photographers roared in gratitude.

Here you can see one of my very first waves, before I got good at it. It looks a bit like I injured my hand and am holding it above my heart to prevent blood loss. Later I wondered if perhaps there is some unwritten code about waving, like maybe the really classy stars don't wave, but the US Weekly stars who court the press do wave, and in waving kind of pledge their life to the paparazzi. Maybe I had unwittingly crossed some sort of line. This is the kind of thing one worries about while doing a press tour alone in a foreign country, and then when one rejoins one's actual life, surrounded by friends and sleep and normal food, one wonders if one wasn't high to have be thinking about such things.

In Paris I spent most of my day off sorting through tiny old pieces of lace in a junk shop. I finally narrowed it down to the four best pieces. I went back to my hotel room and sewed them together with the free hotel sewing kit. This collar is in honor of all the expensive Viktor and Rolf clothes that I will never be able to afford.

I swear this is the last picture of me in this blog.

In this entry I was supposed to re-take the photograph of the MK2 theater that I took in the summer, but now with my movie poster adorning the front of the theater. But my movie poster wasn't there, I think it was too early, or perhaps there were budgetary reasons. Instead here is a picture of the movie poster behind the receptionist at the MK2 offices.

There was also this movie poster hanging in the offices, and it reminded me of the summer when this movie came out, I think I was about 14. My parents had traded houses with someone on the opposite coast, the east coast. I walked around alone in this east coast town and thought about A ROOM WITH A VIEW and thought and thought and thought about LOVE. With this movie the idea of romance had swept in to my mind like a storm, and I just stumbled around, feeling romantic, eating cheap ice cream. This feeling has not gone away, I have just become more diligent in my stumbling, I now stumble for a living. After the french premiere of my movie I flew to the New York premiere of my boyfriend's movie. Exhausted, unclean, bewildered, happy to be by his side. Totally Chambre avec Vue.

2005.09.08

ONE LAST THING,

before I go to France:Just a moment ago I was walking to my house holding these new shoes in my hand,

when I looked down at my front step and saw this:

What does it mean? We don't get to know. Even if it means nothing, we don't get to know for sure that it means nothing. We just have to go forward in time.

Ok. I'm just going to say it. Tomorrow, as soon as I get to Paris, I am put on a helicopter that will take me to Deauville. Helicopters are sometimes called grasshoppers (I just checked on google to be sure, they are.) Large dead grasshopper on my porch, grasshopper shoes that fit me exactly. I don't want to die. It would be just too maudlin and coincidental to foretell my own death in a blog.In any case, I figure I'm safer if just I announce it, upping the coincidenciality. Oh lord, I just realized that the title of the blog is ONE LAST THING. As if it were my last blog ever. But under that it clearly says: "before I go to France." Oh, I know it is all so funny and quirky, but what if I really am afraid? What if I go through life with this fairly high level of anxiety all the time? Wouldn't that be a laugh riot. All right my dears, I'll save it for the next the movie. Wrong format for this kind of self-analysis, it just looks tacky. All for now.

2005.09.07

I AM RUNNING OFF TO PARIS FOR THE FRENCH PREMIERE,

but I wanted to let you know that I will be at the IFC Theater in NY on September 15th, answering questions after the two evening shows. If you were there opening weekend and have follow-up questions, now is the time. I can also tell you how it went in Paris, like a live blog.

Oh, there is so much I want to write about here, but I have not left enough time. I will just leave you with one picture from last week to make you curious. I am the one on the left. Details and explanations to follow. Hint: it didn't happen on Earth. Hint 2: it wasn't my idea. Hint 3: Everyone got hurt but no one minded.

2005.08.23

An Event!

Oh man, look, me and the writer Salman Rushdie will be having an evening next month! When this was confirmed I rushed right out and bought one of his books, The Satanic Verses. There are lots and lots of terrific books that I haven't read so it isn't personal that I haven't read his. So far I am only on page 4; I would be further along if I hadn't gotten caught up in making a Salman Rushdie Badge, based on his author photo. In any case, now I have this badge I can wear while I read the book.

2005.08.20

I AM JUST, LOVE, SOFTNESS, MADNESS.

Don't think I don't know that there are rumors that I am slacking off on my blog. Just because there is no comments section anymore doesn't mean I can't hear you. I think of it less as slacking off and more as getting back to work, because theoretically I am this multi-media artist who is toiling furiously in all the mediums of the world at all times. Also, you know, there are other movies and other blogs now. What about Junebug and Thumbsucker and Broken Flowers? In some theaters these movies will replace Me and You, and that is just life. That is like the seasons, like fruit and harvests and mating. Of course in some countries the movie is just coming out, or won't come out for many months, and I instruct these foreign newcomers to go back to the beginning of the blog in April and read through. It would be bad for you to begin with this entry about slacking off, that is not the right spirit at all. In fact the movie opens this weekend in the UK and I was just there. Among other things, I did a project with The Gaurdian wherein you can email people from Manchester to ask their opinion of the movie: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/0,8542,1551623,00.html

I know one of the participants and she said she has gotten many emails already, here is one she forwarded:

Clement

Hello, my name is Clement I live in France in a small town next to Paris. I have got a big house. I have got two sisters they are friendly. My teachers want me to ask you some questions on the movi: "Me and you and everyone we know."This my questions:Did you like this movi?Did the action are good?Did the actor were good?Thank-you for your participation! :) :) Clement

[Here is an extract of the poem we wrote together in english class today] I am just, love, softness and madness. She reveal melancholy ordinary madness and monotonous.

Amazing that they wrote this poem before they saw the movie. So you see, the fruits are only just beginning to ripen in other parts of the world, we can chase spring all the way to Japan, where the movie opens in March of 2006. Clement can see the movie in Paris when it opens next month, premiering here:

Marc-Antoine of MK2 took this picture, after picking me up from the
hotel on the back of his motorcycle. I have never ridden on the back of
a motorcycle before because I heard it was a good way to get yourself
killed. But what could I do? Right before we took off he said: Lean the
right way or we'll crash. We rode by the Eiffel Tower, I looked up,
there it was, just like in the comic books. I gave in to the
experience. He said next month the Une Aventure sign will be replaced
by a Me and You sign. I will take another picture then, so you can see.
Also you will notice that the trees in the picture will be fall colors,
and this will remind you of what I said about the seasons, harvests,
mating. I will also be older, even though Christine will always be the
same age. Both things are true: everything changes, but ))<>((
forever. And on that note I will gently gesture towards the T Shirt
that is now available:

Here I am, modeling the shirt, one hand on hip, like a model, saying: Cut off my head! My hair is too dirty!